Linux Mint 11: “Katya”

Linux Mint 11, based on the upcoming Ubuntu 11.04 “Natty Narwhal”, will be released in May this year under the codename “Katya”.

Origins: Russian name. Greek origins, associated with the meaning “pure”.

121 comments

  1. I love that you make updates always at the early morning.

    Can’t wait to hear about whats coming as far as features, I hope to get a revamp of the software manager in mint, ubuntu’s software center looks pretty good, I would love things like videos as well as pictures as an option on the packages “page”, just like the android market.

    I say take from ideas from the new android market and the ubuntu software center.

  2. Great news Clem. Looking forward for it. Though very happy with version 9 and sticking on with it.

    Still wondering what’s your take on Unity. Or would you opt for Gnome Shell?

    1. No, not Unity. We’re going for Gnome 3 using a traditional desktop layout (no Gnome Shell). Of course you’ll be able to add Unity or Gnome Shell yourself, but by default the desktop will look similar to the one we’re using at the moment.

  3. Say no for Unity and say no² to Gnome-Shell.

    I miss the universal version […]
    I want to share Linux Mint with friends, but an entire system in only English in a country where the internet is rubbish […]

    Don’t waste time releasing multiple versions (fluxbox, lxde) just gnome, kde and xfce is enough to please everyone.

  4. I failed to upgrade to LM10 from LM 9, as I could not make wifi work on my laptop. In LM9, restricted wifi drivers are added in the livecd itself. However, LM 10 has no restricted wifi drivers added to live cd.
    Please, please, please, see to that LM 11 has restricted wifi drivers added in the cd itself.

  5. Wonderful news and I really like your choice of names. Good to hear that you will be sticking to the traditional desktop layout. People can exercise their choice this way. That’s what Linux is all about !!

  6. “Don’t waste time releasing multiple versions (fluxbox, lxde) just gnome, kde and xfce is enough to please everyone.”

    Please don’t assume that your preferences are the preferences of everyone else or that they’re the ones that make the most sense. Myself, I think the Fluxbox edition is something that makes Mint really special; no other big distro has a Fluxbox variant. I’m also keen on LXDE.

  7. Looking forward to the newest Mint!

    I have to disagree with Carlos Felipe. As far as I am concerned, having Fluxbox and Lxde versions is certainly no waste of time.

    You may want to ask the users, though. Am I the only one, who likes to try out different versions now and then?

  8. Clem, may I congratulate you on your choice, not to go for either Unity nor the Gnome Shell but to keep the desktop traditional. I believe this is the right way to go, and those who want the Gnome Shell or Unity can add it themselves.
    This is exactly what I was hoping for, so I am now a happy man.
    Thank you and have a nice day.

  9. I agree with Micah and would add LMDE to that as it has the potential to add other versionslike kde. in the future but with a Debian base

  10. I think the LXDE interface should be refrained from especially since peppermint offers pretty much the same toolset.
    Not to mean this in the negative sense but I just feel that this talented team can be utilised in a better way for more off-road creative work.

  11. Oh, and you could’ve gone for a Scandinavian flair by using ‘j’ instead! (Katja) :p

    Anyway, looking forward to it, even though I’m on LMDE.

  12. I agree with Hutch! I upgraded the hard drive on my laptop recently and installed LMDE……really like it so far and will stick with it if all continues to go well….I’d love to have alternative desktops (KDE, LXDE, etc.) integrated into LMDE for two reasons: 1) I like trying alternative desktops for my own use, and 2) I’m a college professor and I like to demo alt. desktops to students (and friends), most of whom are unfamiliar with Linux, esp. the variety of desktops that are available….here’s hoping 🙂

  13. I too would like to stick to my LMDE amd64 which is a rolling debian based distribution and I’m not comfortable with installing new distros every quarter. Now I need some stability after trying so many new editions and releases and I think LMDE will make it possible for me. Future variants of LMDE in various flavours like XDE/KDE would surely interest me.

  14. Hi this is an awesome news, I was just hoping for what mint has delivered, MINT always rocks and cares for its users. Thanku mint 🙂

  15. “Don’t waste time releasing multiple versions (fluxbox, lxde) just gnome, kde and xfce is enough to please everyone.”
    Everyone, really ? are you sure ? after trying many Linux distributions, Mint LXDE is the best one for my netbook (very light weight and fast responsive). Many thanks to the developpers to think everybody 😉

    And very good new that Katya will go on with Gnome, I was worried about Unity…

  16. Carlos Felipe your reply didn’t make any sense.
    “I miss the universal version […]
    I want to share Linux Mint with friends, but an entire system in only English in a country where the internet is rubbish […]”
    By your nickname I suppose you speak Portuguese and you can have Mint in Portuguese too. For example, I’m using LMDE in PT-BR. You can help the team to translate it https://translations.launchpad.net/linuxmint

  17. Уявити собі навіть не можу що це буде!!!
    Чекаю з нетерпінням!!! Успіху Вам у Вашій роботі!!!)))))

  18. I like “Katya”, particularly when it is sounds similar to my Indian friend’s name Katyayan! 🙂

    Love LM, Love Linux.

  19. @Carlos Felipe

    I think you have a blog (hope i am right) covering Kubuntu and KDE and
    it is very nice. Probably we expect a review of LM KDE 10….i don`t
    know…but I hope so.

    http://kubuntubrasil.blogspot.com/2010/12/dica-programas-portables-para-linux.html

    Come on guy, next time you came here to post on this blog leave a
    positive comment since you know how to write in English better than
    me.

    Carlos Felipe, you only complain all the time. I am a Brazilian one
    like you and yes, you can get any edition of Linux Mint in pt_BR

    Many thanks to our Brazilian translators for their great work

    Cheers – Jake Alex

  20. Thanks, Clem, for not going with Unity. Ubuntu WAS a desktop distro, now it seems to be the any-gadget distro (tablet, mobile, netbook, etc). It is good to know that heavy-users of desktops, like me, will not get orphans anytime soon.
    Long life to Desktops!! Mint rocks!

    P.S.: for the DVD version, take a look at some ideas implemented by Pinguy, I took a look and got very impressed, but not enough to get away with it.

  21. Thanks for not switching to unity, ubuntu is really disappointing me with this, i like the easy to use interface, it’s simple and familliar.

  22. It’s very nice.I’m installed kernel 2.6.37 in the “Julia” ,super-work,
    any problem.Global menu the same nice idea .Thanks from great JOB!
    Best regards
    Lithuania

  23. Clem! To be honest “Katya” (Катя) is a shortname, similar to “Ben” as “Benjabin” or “Bob” as “Robert”. Fullname is Yekaterina (Екатерина). Just for clarity (I`m bilingual – Russian and Latvian both are my native languages). In any other meaning Katya is fine.

    P.S. Admins should delete posts #18 and #19 – both are bad Russian (he`s wrote “Katya, xxxx!” and “Americans are xxxx”). If it`s possible, delete current POST SCRIPTUM.
    Post #28 is in Ukrainian – there`s all fine with it, just the best wishes to team.

    Edited by Clem: Thanks for this. Deleted the posts and replaced the insults with xxxx.

    1. @Imhoteps: Thanks. It’s such a pity people abuse the Internet like that… I guess we’re down to just assuming anything we can’t understand can potentially be offensive or spam and delete it. We don’t speak every language out there and we can’t afford to run every single comment through a translation tool, so even though every language is welcome here, we’re gonna have to only allow comments we actually do understand. I’ll delete these comments now.

  24. I too would like to add my voice to the multitudes saying that I’m now an LMDE guy and will probably not be going back to the old gnome/Ubuntu derivatives. I too think you should focus more on LMDE and skipping Ubuntu altogether. Unlike most who feel Ubuntu recently jumped the shark, I feel they’ve never really had a hit show from the beginning. That’s been the whole reason for Mint up till the latest release: To fix everything wrong with Ubuntu. But now with LMDE…. Don’t look back. Go your own way. It’s currently the best distro around, and I use it every day. Just polish it up and make sure .deb files work out of the box, and give some support for Wine, Dolphin (the Wii emu), Urban Terror, and fix that annoying error where you can’t run an executable on a FAT32 partition.

    Keep going! Yay Mint!

  25. @ rhY ;what is wrong with the occasional glitch? These are what make LMDE more interesting LOL I do agree that this is the best distro around, Clem and the crew deserve all the accolades for keeping Mint going.

  26. Excellent choice going with Gnome 3 in my opinion Clem. I’m so happy with LMDE right now, I’m not even thinking about any new releases! But I think what you provide is just fantastic, and for so many people…thank-you!

  27. I respectfully disagree with you, rhY! I think that both LMDE and the Ubuntu-based Mint should stay. I for one really enjoy the Ubuntu-based Mint, and while I haven’t tried LMDE, I am not an advanced Linux user, I’ve heard LMDE is much harder to use than its Ubuntu-based relative.

  28. Great News!
    I know this is probably not the right forum for this, but what are the odds of an all-in-one (x86/x64, choice of desktop) DVD?
    Putting only 700MB on a DVD is a waste, and having to burn 4 disks to demo the different flavors to prospective users a pain.

  29. And, LM11 will be a long-term release, right?

    WRT the proposed name of “Katya”: Well, it certainly reminds this long-time LM user/supporter of “Katyusha”, and the sound they made as they fell on our Northern communities, near the border with Lebanon. Ya gotta love Hizbollah… and Russian armaments 🙂

  30. Great. I use fluxbox version on my notebook. It is mint 9. I have some trouble with full screen feature, but everything works fine. I am Brazilian too, and mint works perfectly in Portuguese. It would be good a release with fluxbox gui…

  31. Sounds good. I hope i don’t find myself using Unity for Linux Mint 12. And i hope this is LTS Release too. Love you guys! Lol

  32. Great News can’t wait for Mint 11 (Compiz 0.9.2.1) will no doubt be awesome although already running it on Mint 10 along with Kernel 2.6.38 both sourced from the Natty repositories

    Got three Mint releases installed at present Mint 9 LTS (Dedicated partition) Mint 10 (Dedicated Partition) and Mint 6 (mint4win inside XP)

    I predict Mint 11 will be nothing short of awesome

  33. I love Mint linux 10, I hope there is an improve to allove the sofware to mange windows well such that the netbook sizes eg 1024*700 are recognized. the speed of lmde is amazing and should’nt the new katya be made just as fast.

  34. I just wanted to say thanks to Clem and the team for all their hard work! I have but one request, I really like the custom Conky from pinguyos, but it’s over my head to get it working, let alone customized as nicely as he has it. Could it be added as an option maybe?

  35. I’m a fan of LXDE on my netbook (an EEE 4G so it’s slow). I think it’s more useful than the XFCE version personally.

  36. Great news, i’ve been waiting for the news about ubuntu 11.04 based release, thanks for the great work)))) I have been using Helena for a year and it works great, this summer i will try out the Mint 11 on ,y laptop)))
    Special thanks for LMDE, i’ve been looking for a rolling release stable distro for quite a long time).

  37. HI
    Katya – a nice name – Brazil – Cátia or Kátia

    We don’t have Letters K Y W in current Brazilian
    Portuguese language. Just have them for names,
    abbreviations and measurements

    About the .iso stored on HeaNet for KDE 10 Stable
    32 bit. Md5sum correct – DVD integrity, no errors
    found. The Live DVD delays to load and after waiting
    a message pops up. Run in low graphic mode just one
    session. Well, say Ok and the Live DVD boots normally.

    NVidia graphic card 9400 GT. I was wondering how would
    be the system behave (screen and video-driver) installed
    on the hard drive. Can we expect some failure or do the
    thing to see what can happen?

    I’ll try to resize my NTFS partition (data, videos and other
    stuff saved) to install KDE 10 and hope to be successful on
    this task. Firstly, i will wait for the official release to
    verify it’s the same .iso and md5sum.

    Cheers

  38. Muy adelantado la eleccion del nombre pero bonito me pareció, pero yo me pregunto si a futuro como seguiras el menu si leí que Gnome terminara dejando el menú clásico por completo (incluyendo dependencias) a corto plazo

    Well advanced but nice choice of name seemed to me, but I wonder if in the future as you will keep the menu and appearance ended when I read that Gnome leaving the entire classic environment (including dependencies insurmountable doing the same) in the short term.

  39. It would not hurt to look at the diversity of choices from other distros. Why not include some choice and flexibility in the live DVD? You could include an option for the traditional desktop, Gnome shell or Ubuntu’s Unity on the DVD version, much like OpenSUSE has with GNOME or KDE desktops or how Mandriva allowed you to include Compiz or not.

    It may overwhelm new users with so many choices, though. I thought that since the DVD release is large already that it wouldn’t hurt to add more MBs for the convenience of choice. How could developers include the choice in the installer without popping up and blockading the install for new users?

    Also, Crunchbang had a “Lite Edition” where advanced users started with a rather clean slate and downloaded their own choice of apps after the barebone installation. They knew what they wanted and got it right away without uninstalling unwanted bloat. You could even go so far as a step away from a graphical Arch Linux install where the user chooses their own DE/WM and apps, again, for advanced users. This may sound like a tall order for the next release, but just for consideration in the future.

    Thank you for making this wonderful operating system freely available for all, and I hope this suggestion helps make Linux Mint even better as the community continues to deliberate. Mint, FTW!

  40. Love the new name. It’s easy to pronounce and spell. Hard to believe the time for Mint 11 is fast approaching. I don’t see how you can improve on Mint 10, but then that’s what the Dev Team always does so well. Mint 10 is working 100% for me, but as usual I’ll be tempted into trying Mint 11. 🙂

  41. I’m excited about Linux Mint 11 Katya (and like the name!) and I’m glad for the conservative choice of DE at this point. I’m also looking forward to testing out all the new releases of the major DE’s.

    Thank you!

  42. Will Gnome shell be in the Mint repository? As it stands now, Ubuntu will not carry the Gnome shell in theirs. I will switch back to Mint if you say yes 🙂

  43. hi
    I am truly glad to here the upcoming release of Katya Linux mint 11 .And all the very best wishes and congratulation to the Linux mint Team

  44. i started trying Linux mint with Helena, since then everything changed.I upgraded to Isadora and now i am using Julia with great pleasure . i have shared this wonderful event with my fiends and all of them immediately changed to Linux Mint.now truly enthusiastic about KATYA Linux Mint 11.

  45. Outstanding Clem and THANK YOU for not going with either Unity or Gnome
    Shell. I haven’t messed about much with the shell but Ubuntu’s Unity is nothing but a complete ^%$#$#@. For the life of me I cannot make any sense of it.

    I’m wondering how many users Ubuntu will loose …..

    Anyway as always Clem each release of Mint is more polished and sexier than the last!!!

  46. I disagree with all the Unity hate. I have grown increasingly disheartened by the desktop environment development in Linux the past few years. On one end we have KDE4 which is complete garbage, and on the other end we have Gnome which has just gotten stale. In between is just a bunch of minimalist circa 1995 DE’s. Unity offers another approach, and I am glad to see such creativity on the Linux desktop.

  47. Now that Mint is so stable, why not back off the new version every six months routine? Once a year or at 18-24 month intervals would be sufficient. Might be a big jump between Ubuntu versions, but who cares? Maybe I need to try the Debian rolling release, but that holds too many possibilities to break the system for someone relying on their computer. I can’t get Mint10 to install on one of my machines, will probably wait and see if that problem was fixed with 11 now.

  48. why not include a bunch of useful software in the dvd version of mint 11? include a text to speech apl, an e-reader apl, globus preview etc.
    all useful thinks.their is enough space in a dvd i think no?

  49. Hi Clem & Team,

    can you make it easier to download googleearth, this is a must-have to me, it is jumpy on LMDE, and I cannot get the photo`s, I realise this is not your fault.

  50. Great Choice Clem. Looking forward to seeing what great improvements you and your team have come up with with 11. Mint just keeps getting better and better.

  51. Hi,
    After trying several distros Mint 10 was the best choice and i’m sticking to it. I don’t care which shell you will put on. I care that Linux remains a matter of free choice.
    Excellent work Clem.
    thanks..

  52. @edi its not just about space on the DVD, its also about download size. The larger the download size, the less people who can, or are willing to, download.

    @frank I reinstall/install Linux mint on many computers and I like having updated files. As it is with LM10 I have a hour or so download ahead of me after an install. I wouldn’t mind big release numbers every year, but at least updated install discs, every six months (call them LM10.5 or such). I tried the LMDE and it was very broken, its a great idea but I do not think its ready yet.

  53. @Clem: Fantastic news about Gnome 3! I have read about performance boosts with this, so here’s hoping it’ll be a little faster.

    Being able to easily switch between Gnome Shell and the traditional desktop would be a bonus.

    Would LOVE to have Mint move away from Ubuntu and on to Debian completely. LMDE performs waaaaaaaaaaay better than the main edition. Doesn’t give me my wobbly windows, though. 🙁

  54. @flaminglemon I agree that we should move Mint away from Ubuntu, if just to distinguish Linux Mint more, but as for LMDE performing better, I disagree. I spent all of twenty minutes in a fresh LMDE install, and it was one of the worst Linux experiences I have had (and I have been doing the Linux thing for a long time now). Every single thing that makes Linux Mint better than every other distro, is sadly lacking in LMDE. Granted it is a rolling release, so everything that plagued me could well have been fixed by now, but I think I’ll give it another year before I move from a main edition Mint to LMDE.

  55. Awesome, cant wait.
    I’m personally hoping for an easier way to select the default monitor, been having some problems with that in the past.

  56. On the whole, I agree with latreides. I love the idea of a rolling release, but conventional Mint has spoiled me. I plan on keeping LMDE on my test box, but I’ve gone back to Mint 10 on my other computers.

  57. Dommage. J’envisageais l’adoption de Mint mais avec le choix d’Unite le desktop propriétaire, je vais me tourner vers une autre distrib. Bonne continuation.

  58. i´ve installed only ine time linux mint (Version Julia) and i love it also with the dvd version has all that i want (and need) excepting drivers and support ot my broadcom wireless card…. i hope this new version (Katya) bring support.

    the thing is that when i restart to complet the update of my system the wireless conection option disappears from the list and i couldn´t use it anymore, i only could use the wired network (when i reach a wire to connect me….!!!), so i return to ubuntu 10.04 so i am sad because linux mint is so wow….!!! so again i hope to Katya won´t have this problem, and other thing is that ubuntu 10.10 can´t mount one partition (the first) of my second hard disk after i updated the system this message appears when i restart the computer
    ” modprobe: Fatal: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.35-22-generic/modules.dep: no such file or directory “

  59. i hope too. that the “M” name will be Maria from México that means “Mary” in English or Luisa the female of Luis

  60. I love Linux Mint and can’t wait for Kayta. I am a developer and run solely Mint since 6 and converted about 10 other developers that I have worked with from Windows. The only problem I have with it is that the permissions on the home folder are set up so that only one user can use a Mint box securely. Unlike other distros, Mint demands no security on their users files. Everyone can look at everyones else’s files unless they encrypt their home directory which has entails performance issues. This baffles me to no end and is marked as “Will not fix” in each of the numerous bug reports filed. This is the only thing that I would firmly suggest in 11. Other than that, thanks for all your hard work and I’ll be there with you.

    – Sam

  61. Clem,

    Katya was a well-chosen name For Linux Mint 11.Cool!

    Since you broke with tradition (latin / greek) codenames
    here’s a suggestion:

    Linux Mint: New mountains to climb (code-names)
    We already have enough western names.
    Why not innovate and kind to consider names of Eastern Europe,
    Hebrew, Arabic, japanese, chinese, Indian, Indonesian,
    Pakistani, African, etc.
    Just a note: these names should not have accents,
    easy to spell, meaning, and obviously female names.

    Regards
    Roberto

  62. Thanks Clem, for all your dedication to make Linux Mint an outstanding distro.
    In the future, keep it simple, emphasize on stability,
    get it out of the ‘playground’ and make it usable for all who want to do serious daily work with it!
    People who want to experiment have the freedom to do so without asking you to overload a basic version.

  63. Maybe with this release, us XFCE users will be upgraded to Isadora. Yes I’m aware of why it’s taking so long and I’m not angry so please dont take this as sarcastic.

  64. Hello Clem, excellent news.
    No doubt the Linux Mint was the best Linux distribution I’ve used, you and your team are to be congratulated, I am Brazilian and mint works perfectly in Portuguese.

  65. Glade read that you will be staying with the true gnome desktop not Natty Narwhal I think this will bring a lot of people over from Ubuntu I just don’t think that Ubuntu is going the right way with that and I think people will let them know by switching to the real gnome desktop look just my two cents
    David St.louis, Mo

  66. Hi all I hope Linux Mint 11 Katya is just as good as Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhel because my Laptop Toshiba L510 PSLGXA-002002 runs on it like a dream so far or better because I normaly like to use Linux Mint to use because for a newbe its easy to install.

  67. just wanted to say congrats, i am workin with different linux distros for 3 years & i think mint is the best distro, keep up the good work!

  68. (^using linux mint 8) Linux Mint 11 and 10 seem good, however I’m waiting for the known Moonlight problems to be worked out.
    also i want the other mint’s to follow suit with 8 and autodetect/support usb wireless cards. but I am unsure of weather or not they will support mine. Anyway it looks good and is great to see such progress, by mint 12 I will get the best mint I can find. fluxbox seems like the solution for those afraid of trusting wine in my opinion ^͜^

  69. ↑wrong about fluxbox, but it seems KWin would work better for the same things.

    also please ignore the 8) it was intended to be Mint #8 )

  70. Hey, great news. I was wondering about the new desktop by elementary. Because, thinking at long term maybe the traditional gnome will be deprecated. I don’t like the idea to have an outdated desktop in a new release (not this, maybe at the end of the year).

    Cheers.-

  71. Excellent news with regards to the desktop! I’m a long time Ubuntu user and the whole Unity issue has left me wondering where to go.
    This announcement has made my mind up as I consider Mint to be the only Ubuntu based distro worth installing.
    Also, having recently installed Mint 10 on a friend’s laptop which required a Broadcom driver download, I would ask that these restricted drivers are included on the live DVD, if not CD, solely to make the already easy install even easier for the new user.

  72. Great news! After trying five different distro’s this one is the one that not only works with my skype and lifecam without to much difficulty but also the installing of software through the manager works like it was supposed to work from the beginning. No more hasseling to get that one piece of software installed that isn’t in the repository…. even that kind of software usually instals quite nicely in Mint KDE amd64 on my dell laptop. I’m so confident this is the right distro for me, i’mn going to remove the Windows 7 installation that’s on the other drivepartition and going solely onto Mint! Compliments and thanks to everyone who worked on this and finally understood what people want and need out of Linux when they consider it as an alternative to Wid0ws… after all those years i’ve been trying linux, you may have finally seduced me to the dark side!

  73. Please add LVM support to Linux Mint 11. It will take very small space to just add the packages. You don’t have to add LVM support into the installer, but having the packages will easily allow me to open up a terminal and modprobe dm-mod && vgchange -a y. I wrote a guide on the Linux Mint Forum (Installation & Boot) about Installing Linux Mint with LVM. I would also have to agree with post #6 about the wireless drivers. I have a BCM4313 (broadcom-sta) and it would be very good if the driver was in the disk without having to plug in a ethernet cable to get the driver activated.

    Great job with Linux Mint and keep up the good work.

  74. May I be another one to express my gratitude for sticiking to the traditional desktop. Until recently I’ve been using KDE3 but the time had come to install a new system on the new computer. At first I tried some distros with KDE4 but neither of them worked as expected. I figured that KDE4 is simply ‘broken’. Functionally. For me at least. Then I accidentally discovered Mint and quickly decided that its default gnome desktop is just brilliant. I switched from gnome to KDE in 2000 and never looked back. Now – gnome is like old KDE for me, intuitive and clean. Everything that KDE4 is no more. Yesterday I tried Mint 10 KDE ang while it is really nice for KDE4 (better than any other KDE distro I tried), it’s still inferior to the default Gnome dekstop. So now I cannot wait to see Mint 11 *without* unity or other experiments. Thank you!

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